Over 1,000 Saudi-backed recruits defect from various fronts

ADEN, Aug. 10 (YPA) – Multiple human rights and media sources affirmed on Monday that a large-scale military defection had taken place among Saudi-funded Dera al-Watan forces across four fronts bordering areas held by Sanaa forces.

The sources said more than 1,000 recruits had left their camps and front lines and returned to their home areas in various southern and eastern Yemeni provinces, refusing to fight Sanaa forces in a conflict they said did not concern them.

According to the sources, most of the defecting recruits withdrew from positions on the fronts of Dhalea, Karsh, the western coast and Haifan in Taiz, saying they refused to become fuel for Saudi wars being waged against the Yemeni people for no meaningful purpose.

They added that the defections among recruits from southern provinces came amid growing street protests in the south calling for an end to Saudi tutelage, as well as in response to Saudi airstrikes against forces aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in the Wadi Hadramout districts late last year.

The sources said Saudi Arabia, through Salafi groups within the Dera al-Watan and Emergency camps, continues to repeat the same justifications and slogans it used when the war on Yemen began in March 2015, using sectarian, regional and religious narratives to push recruits into direct confrontations in pursuit of its own interests, far removed from the promises it has made to residents of the southern provinces over the past decade.